08-04-2021

THUrSDay, aPrIL 8, 2021
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Thursday, April 08, 2021
Role of
remittance
ABangladesh Bank study reports that remittance sent
by expatriates is mostly used for consumption and in
the "non-productive" sectors in the country. The
survey conducted in 2011 found 90% of remittances were
used for meeting basic needs. Seventy-five percent of
households receiving remittance spent those on food, 42%
on loan repayment, 65% on education, 57% on treatment,
49% on marriage and 4% on running legal battles (multiple
responses allowed). Experts described these as failure of
successive governments to act on diverting the remittances
into "productive" sectors instead of consumption.
Nothing could be further from truth even if we assume
for the sake of argument that all remittances go to finance
consumption plus acquisition of assets such as land.
The criticism is flawed for several reasons. Remittances
in Bangladesh are generally a contribution to the family
budget, not capital flows. Given the socio-cultural and
educational background of the majority of migrant
households, they are generally ill-prepared to undertake
risky activities. Evidence from some countries including
Bangladesh shows that the pattern of expenditure is
invariant between remittance-receiving and non-receiving
households when controlled for income and socio-cultural
differences.
Spending remittances on consumption often contributes
to improved health, education and human capital,
enhancing both private and public welfare. It may be that in
many cases a significant part of the remittance-related
investment increases stock of wealth of the migrant
household in the form of land, housing and jewelry. But
these have indirect macro-economic effects on
development. They provide a monetary base for the supply
of credit that can be used as investment capital. Whether or
not the supply of additional credit will actually be used for
investment purposes depends on the efficacy of the banking
system, the government and, more generally, on the overall
investment climate.
In Bangladesh as elsewhere, remittances have a related,
but distinctive type of positive effect on the rural economy
where lack of effective demand is often a serious constraint
on economic growth. A large part of the remittances is
almost invariably spent on locally produced goods and
services. New demands for a variety of goods and services,
largely from a class within society that had previously little
purchasing power, have a powerful impact on production of
both tradable and non-tradable labor-intensive goods and
services, land markets, construction and spread of banking
and commerce. The consequent stimulus given to local
industry, through better utilization of installed capacity or
creation of new productive units, far exceeds the value of the
initial rounds of expenditure. By generating a multiplier
effect they stimulate aggregate demand, output and income.
Analyses of the dynamic macro-economic impact of
remittance induced expenditure show that its multiplier
effect on GNP could be as high as 1:2 or 1:3. In other words,
a remittance of $1 million could increase the country's GNP
by more than $2 to 3 million. Remittances in Bangladesh are
estimated to have a multiplier effect of 1:2.1 on GNP in the
long run.
Some caveats deserve mentioning. When remittances
lead to increased trading of existing goods, such as houses
and land, the expenditure may increase the stock of wealth
and investment of the family, not the country. However,
except in highly implausible cases where the supply of
production inputs is completely inelastic and factors are
immobile, increased demand due to remittance induced
expenditure lead over time to increased growth and
employment, even if it creates inflation in the short term.
Nonetheless, the slow response of input supplies could well
be a real problem, reducing the multiplier effect of
remittance expenditure on income and output. This may be
exacerbated if in the face of rising inflation at the local level
the central bank adopts a tighter monetary policy, thus
offsetting some of the local multiplier effect by stifling
demand elsewhere in the economy.
The nature of linkages between the remittance-receiving
localities and the national economy also influences the
remittances' multiplier effect on the overall economy. When
remittances are concentrated in limited areas, as is the case
in Bangladesh, the growth impulses of the multiplier are not
likely to be transmitted to the national economy. However,
to the extent that the remittance-receiving areas are
integrated with the rest of the economy, a good part of the
benefits of remittances tends to be passed on to other parts
of the country. The overall development effect of remittances
cannot be fully gauged by focusing on the remittancereceiving
communities alone without accounting for the
positive effect of remittances to the other parts of the
economy.
Summing up, remittances can make a positive impact on
output growth and overall economic performance under two
economy-wide conditions. First, the economy has an
integrated productive structure capable of responding
positively to the stimuli of remittances from abroad. Second,
the country has sound macro-economic policies, political
stability, and an investment-friendly environment,
including an efficient financial system and public
administration. Remittances, by themselves, cannot create
these conditions. Absent such conditions, remittance still
increase welfare by supplementing budgets of the recipient
households, providing the foreign exchange needed for
financing imports related to domestic consumption and
investment, and deepening the deposit base as well as the
income sources of the domestic banking system.
Wisdom of Crowds for innovative teaching
The most fundamental contribution
of education is to enable people to
better themselves to engage
themselves in socially productive tasks to
build a stronger nation economically and
otherwise. The assumption is that at the
end of an academic programme, the
learners, i.e., the students, would acquire
capabilities that, in turn, would add to
the competitive advantage of their
respective countries through
technological and also non-technological
means. This fits well in an input-output
model in which the inputs are the
students. They are also the outputs but
having gone through a transformation
system, i.e., an educational process that
makes them professionally more capable
through value addition. The question is
whether any value has been added
during the learning process, and if so,
what is its quantum. This is where the
question of teaching and assessment
comes in.
In recent times, questions have been
raised publicly about education's
effectiveness because it consumes a
substantial national GDP at the national
level. Accordingly, the demand for an
accountable and transparent teaching
and assessment system has been
noticeable. While we have witnessed an
unprecedented level of growth in Higher
education in Bangladesh over the past
three decades, change was mainly within
the private sector. Both the number of
higher educational institutions and the
number of students in this sector
reached an unprecedented level. The
country has already proved it is in a rapid
growth trajectory and is becoming one of
the world's most expanded economies.
Therefore, growth and development
must go hand in hand. Now is the time
for the nation to have a more robust
education policy, and institutions must
be more agile to adapt and change their
Dr P. r. DaTTa
Blended Learning Center (BLC) can be the Role Model for Online Education
The corona virus
(COVID-19)
pandemic is
the defining global
health crisis of our
time and the greatest
challenge we have
faced since the
Second World War. Second wave of
Corona began to hit in Bangladesh as well
as worldwide which effects and paralyzes
our normal life. County is now facing Lock
Down for second time.
At this pandemic the sector which is
facing lockdown in Bangladesh for more
than a year is education. Schools, colleges,
universities or even their residential halls
are still locked down. Online activities are
gaining momentum day by day.
Educational institutions for their survival
are also trying to continue academic
activities through online platform. Due to
lack of previous practice and incorporation
of well equipped modern facilities
maximum institutions are facing lot of
troubles and obstacles for smooth
operation of online academic activities.
But there is an institution, and that's not
in any developed country, rather in this
developing Bangladesh, which hasn't
waited much even for a single day to
continue its all sorts of academic and
administrative activities. That is Daffodil
International University (DIU). The
greatest weapon that DIU is currently
using is its own Blended Learning Center
(BLC), Learning Management System
(LMS) and Go Edu platform. DIU started
using online platform BLC from the day
one it faced lockdown. Not only that DIU
recognized as Digital University has the
earlier experience of conducting classes
through online platform since 2013.
100% academic activities of the
university are going on in full swing
smoothly using the BLC platform which
DIU started in 2013. As the teachers and
students have earlier experience and are
habituated with online platform for the
last 8-10 years, so it becomes very easy for
them to conduct academic and
administrative activities. As a part of
complete automation and digitalization,
the university has combined the strength
of its BLC platform for performing
academic activities and Smart Edu for
administrative purposes".
Blended Learning Center (BLC) is the
unique digital teaching and learning hub
of Daffodil International University. The
platform aims to connect teachers and
students effectively allowing teachers to
track progress of individual students and
better facilitate their learning.
Daffodil International University has
reputation as the pioneering digital
university in Bangladesh. As the process of
its digitalization DIU has been developing
BLC from 2013 and equipping students
and teachers compatible to work with this.
An efficient and active team is working for
the continuous development and training
of teachers and students. Apart from that
approaches to align with current needs.
To address global dynamism,
institutions must move with the trends
and time. Innovative teaching and
assessment are essential to provide
adequate scaffolding for knowledge and
develop a moral citizen. However, it
seems we are losing day by day the true
meaning of educational philosophy that
knowledge is an internal manifestation,
and all educational system must
recognise and discover this. Independent
learning is not the current norm of our
education; instead, it is tutors driven in
which students are bombarded with
information in a mechanical way.
Innovative teaching approaches are
imperative to enhance learners' learning
experiences. Assessment should not be a
one-time exercise at the end of a
programme but needs to be continuous.
As a course progresses, there should be a
diagnostic exercise to identify students'
strengths and weaknesses so that there is
definite progress in the students'
achievement - that weaknesses are
minimised, and their strengths are
maximised. Periodically, therefore, there
should be home tasks, class tests and
group assignments throughout the
programme. This assessment phase,
referred to as formative assessment, is
meant to enhance the students' learning
process, mainly through feedback. There
is another aspect to it that should not be
missed the sight of. In this phase, if
MD. aNowar HaBIB KazaL
the academic departments also poured
their heart and soul to equip themselves
with the tools and technologies available in
the BLC platform within the shortest time
possible. As a result, Daffodil
International University (DIU) had been
successfully conducting online classes
from the start of Covid-19 pandemic using
the BLC platform, LMS, and Go Edu
platform
At the beginning of the transformation
to fully online class, there were some
problems with the poor internet
connection for the students located in
remote locations of the country. However,
because of the low data functionality of
BLC, DIU has overcome the problem
within a very short time. Along with it,
DIU also worked on collaborating with
Grameen Phone and Robi to bring in a low
price data package for its students.
At this pandemic, the university has
been successfully completing all academic
and administrative activities through
online and served the majority of its
students located in remote locations of the
country. Presently the university could
successfully accommodate over 29000
users including students, teachers and
administrators, Over 7154 courses in the
BLC platform with a strong cloud based
infrastructure.
BLC is a well structured & robust e-
Learning Management System and is a
one stop solution to create, organize,
communicate & manage courses. BLC is
very simple to use & manage for teachers &
students with incredibly powerful plug-ins
and integrations. The platform comes with
a drag and drop Course Builder that helps
teachers to publish courses with ease. It is
convenient to add or create (link or
embed) course materials, new lessons
videos, audio, PowerPoint, drive
resources, any files from desktop, and
even interactive contents. The platform
contains over 25 inbuilt features along
with hundreds of plug-ins and integrations
that extends the possibilities for the
teachers to engage their students in
multiple and flexible ways.
Quizzes, assignments, forums and
online workshops provoke curiosity and
make students participate in courses
more. It comes with the most advanced
quiz creator allowing teachers to set any
kind of questions with ability to set timed
quiz and track the attempts of the
students. With this, the teachers can
maintain the quiz quality and integrity of
the quiz or examinations. The platform
also is integrated with Turnitin Plagiarism
checker to present teachers with the
properly conducted, the students,
through participation and contribution
to completing their group assignments,
can learn the outstanding contribution
that group culture/teamwork makes to
managerial effectiveness- an important
factor in organisational performance
often underestimated. Students are
examined and receive marks and grades
for their performance in the final phase
of assessment, referred to as summative
assessment.
The main thrust of teaching and
assessment is to establish the
effectiveness of teaching and learning as
it seems we are losing day by day the true meaning of educational philosophy
that knowledge is an internal manifestation, and all educational
system must recognise and discover this. Independent learning
is not the current norm of our education; instead, it is tutors driven in
which students are bombarded with information in a mechanical way.
such. A properly executed diagnostic and
formative assessment will show their
impact on how far the participants have
moved along the path of higher-order
skills as propounded by Bloom (Bloom's
Taxonomy). The summative assessment
will be the ultimate test to show how far
the transformation process has enriched
the students. If properly conducted, the
students will now be that much more
confident to face the world of
employment. If this were to happen at a
national level, society would be that
much stronger. But its impact does not
end here. As alumni, it is well known,
and students significantly influence their
alma maters in curriculum formation to
take their universities/colleges further
ahead. In turn, this will have its effect on
the teaching faculty as well. Assessment
is, thus, holistic and should not be seen
originality report of the students'
submissions.
With these many options, teachers are
able to set questions to assess the students
following Bloom's Taxonomy so that the
teachers can easily identify what level of
understanding they (students) are at
present and accordingly provide them
further guidelines. All assessment results
are accumulated automatically to a highly
customizable grade book which gives the
teachers an overview of how each student
is performing in the course. Students can
also see their records anytime from there
so that they can plan and prepare better
for the next assessments. In a word the
platform has increased the transparency
and integrity for both the students and
teachers. The examination section of the
university can also track and check these
records that allow them to ensure the
examination quality and integrity.
The BLC Platform also supports
multiple instructors for a single course.
This is helpful for teachers to collaborate
with one another in preparation for the
course and also improve the content
The greatest weapon that DIU is currently using is its own Blended
Learning Center (BLC), Learning Management System (LMS) and Go Edu
platform. DIU started using online platform BLC from the day one it faced
lockdown. Not only that DIU recognized as Digital University has the earlier
experience of conducting classes through online platform since 2013.
quality. Departments can also keep course
repositories separately in the platform so
that teachers can update their courses
from time to time before offering the
courses for the new semester.
Departments can also check these
repositories and provide guidelines to
teachers on the improvement scopes.
Moreover, the BLC platform has its own
analytics tool with three separate
dashboards: Teacher Dashboard, Student
Dashboard and Admin Dashboard. With
it, the teachers can check the performance
of their students and their courses from a
single dashboard and get a detailed report
on their courses with a few clicks.
Similarly, the students can also get insight
on their present performance from various
courses so that they can prepare well and
get organized or take help from their
teachers. The Admin Dashboard let the
university management gain insight and
report on the overall performance and
activities of the platform allowing them to
ensure teacher and student success. The
reports are segmented into useful insight
points like active teachers, course
completion, teacher engagement,
abnormal grades, innovative teachers,
active students, at risk students and so on.
These reports can also be sorted according
to the Faculties, Departments and
Semesters. Also it is possible to get reports
of a custom period of time.
One of the greatest upsides to teaching
online through BLC is that the classes can
as bureaucratically burdensome if it is
properly conducted and is weighed in
cost-benefit terms.
However, sadly, teaching, learning and
assessment paradigms in Bangladesh
seems in its fixed mindset and does not
want to move from their primitive nature
to a large extent. It still lacks a coherent
approach to provide a heuristic and
robust nature of learning experiences to
students. Most assessments are based on
rigorous examinations at the end of the
semester, while teaching is till one-way
communication and tutors driven. To
make teaching and assessment students
centric the institutions and educators
should focus on innovative practices that
are only possible when collective
intelligence is given consideration. The
wisdom of crowds in teaching and
assessment will enhance learners
learning experiences and knowledge.
The introduction of flipping classroom
& collaborative teaching will enable
learners to change active users'
knowledge from passive learners. That
will help them to become more confident
and master of their field. In the age of
globalisation & unprecedented
technological advancement, we must
focus on students' teaching experience
and create a growth mindset with the
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
understanding that makes compound
knowledge. Today's students are more
prone to social media network and
technological platforms. These become
an indispensable tool for many students
and educators to gather information and
communicate to the broader audience.
Many organisations and social network
users use crowds' wisdom to collect data
for the decision-making process.
The Writer is Executive Chair,
Centre for Business & Economic
Research, UK
be easily made visually appealing, with
videos from multiple sources like
YouTube, google, drive, edpuzzle, H5P
interactive content. To create courses for
the students, teachers can upload a variety
of multimedia files, images, PDFs, docs,
excel sheets and so on. Teachers also can
assign custom badges based on the
activities in the courses. Students find it
very encouraging and rewarding to engage
in the course activities to earn those
badges.
Students can interact freely with the
problem discussion forum sections, where
they can comment and ask questions to
the teachers, students can also review, rate
and give feedback on their courses.
Teachers also take periodic feedback and
surveys from the students from within the
BLC platform.
The BLC platform is currently based on
an intellectually designed cloud
infrastructure suggested by both locally
and internationally recognized experts
which enables the students to learn
regardless of their remote location or
internet connectivity and makes learning
interactive and lively. In the recent
semester DIU teachers have initiated a
total of 1647 courses through the BLC
platform where over 16000 active
students are engaged and continuing their
studies online. The university also has the
technology to conduct various learning
webinars aiming to develop both teachers
and students and through which students
get the opportunity to have classes with
world's renowned professors.
It is Daffodil International University
(DIU), relentlessly striving for the
betterment of higher education in national
and international levels. One of the
challenges that private universities face is
regarding credibility, transparency and
validity. The university is continuously
excelling in world rankings with its
education and researches. Even at this
pandemic situation, still Daffodil
International University is running with
its usual pace, even faster.
Lots of students fear about session jam
in the coming future. But, DIU has
inspired other institutions to run the
operations even in this crisis. Not only the
academic, any institution can be
encouraged by its effort like SmartEdu. In
the next challenging New Normal world,
where even survival might be a big factor,
Daffodil International University is
committed to build its students as fully
fitted with entrepreneurial mindset and
technological expertise. The University is
indeed leading the country's education
from the front during the pandemic. DIU
is now getting ready to contribute in
Udemy, CourseEra etc. famous online
learning platforms. It is therefore
progressing beyond national boundary
and to contribute worldwide.
Md. Anowar Habib Kazal, Senior
Assistant Director (Public Relations),
Daffodil International University